Endlessly
by Kyonomiko
Summary: "He can see endless fathoms in her gaze, and he knows why men would follow a siren into the deep."


**Written on the fly as a gift for PartyLines! Alpha'd by In Dreams but moved too fast for beta phase so mistakes are alllllll mine mine mine.**

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"Where did you get that wound?"

Draco is staring at his once-rival as she gazes back. Her eyes are wide and focused where his hand is held to his throat. A trickle of warmth slides down the crease of his fingers, and he knows he's bleeding.

"What the bloody fuck do you mean, where? _You_, you crazy bint. Fucking _scratched_ me. What were you doing in the lake?"

He watches as she looks down at herself, seeming to just then realize she is dripping wet, as is he. "I don't… I was in the water…" She days it like she'd nearly forgotten.

"In the water and calling for help. What, did you not remember in the entire _three minutes_ between then and now?!"

Draco is quite agitated by this whole affair. There he was, minding his own (his new favourite 8th year past time since he's the pariah of Hogwarts) when this one, Gryffindor's favorite golden child, calls him to the lake. Perhaps _calling for help_ isn't the right phrasing. It was more like she was enticing him to join her, but that can't be right, so he's remembering it in a way that makes more sense. Obviously, she needed help. What else would she be doing in the lake at night, past curfew, shouting for someone on the shore?

"No, I… I remember… Malfoy, I'm so sorry," she whispers back. "Could you… make out what I was saying."

It's dark by the shore, only his wand, laying in the dirt, casting a lumos and lighting the space between them, but he would swear she is blushing.

"Not entirely," he hedges, and it's sort of true. Though, if he's honest, he's pretty certain she mentioned something about being wet that didn't sound entirely like she meant lake water. "What the fuck were you doing in the lake?"

He watches her look away, gazing out at the black water. "I don't know why I went out there," she says, and he believes her, but yet is positive she's lying in some way. "And you brought me back..."

He nods. "Of course. Not that you made it easy, evident by this," he stresses, lifting his hand to show the scratch under his chin. "Fought all the way back like I was going to drown you." Draco lets that sink in, and suddenly is a bit offended. "Is that it, Granger? Afraid the Death Eater was going to hurt you? I thought we were past that," he spits out.

Ten months after the end of the war, and Draco was fairly certain he had developed at least an acquaintanceship with the witch. _At least_ that. He'd dared to entertain hope for more. Just before the hols, they even partnered in Runes with very little conflict. Alright, sure, it was professor-mandated, but they scored top marks for their efforts and began the following month with nods of acknowledgement in the corridors and polite greetings at Prefect meetings. Those social norms grew steadily into something else. Something that, while undefined, would send him into a chilled lake to save her in the dead of night. Something that shatters his heart when she looks at him as she is now.

Here sits the ugly truth, wet and shivering in her robes and looking afraid: She's still terrified of him. He shakes his head in disgust.

"No. No, I don't," she's denying. "I mean, we _are_. I'm not scared of you."

"Oh, no? Then why are you shaking like I'm your own personal boggart?"

"I'm not afraid of you, Draco," she says, more serious than he's ever heard, "but I am afraid _you_ should be."

His heart beats hard in his chest, her demeanor suddenly almost aggressive, her voice low. Swallowing the streak of fear, he sounds more bold than he feels, "Why?" He questions, trying to make light. "Because you're some war hero? What are you going to do, write an angry letter to the Ministry at me? Sic Potter at me?"

"No," she denies again, rising with feline grace to her feet. Her cloak falls from her shoulders to reveal her in only her underthings. It's a strange thing, to be frightened and aroused in equal measure.

"No. No angry letters, Draco Malfoy, but this one would make you hers."

He scrambles to his feet with far less poise than she. Her voice has evolved so quickly, he hardly noticed as it happened. Where she had started as the Granger he knows, voice relatively sweet, somewhat motherly, had morphed into a deep and sultry tone before fully transforming into the otherworldly echo he hears now. It's beautiful and maddening and sets his nerves on edge.

"This one?" he asks, picking up on her strange verbal cue. Is this even Hermione Granger?

The creature (because _witch_ doesn't seem like it's quite enough anymore, not quite accurate) nods. "This one was unsure. She watched you, and she wanted. There was guilt, quaint and naive, that she should not want. I would drown you, and make you mine by taking you to the sea, but she will not allow it."

She approaches, laying her fingertip delicately against his chest. Draco swallows hard but holds his ground. She's slight and her wand was left with her robes, after all. What could she possibly do to him?

"This one will not let me drown you, but we will make you ours."

Finding his voice, he asks, "What are you?"

"I am Hermione Granger," it says, sounding like many voices echoing on the breeze.

"You're not," he denies, shaking his head and stepping back one pace. Her fingertips are left suspended, her reaching towards him in the encroaching dark, his wand dimming in the night. "Hermione Granger is a witch. A muggleborn," he adds, careful not to use a slur. "You're… something else."

"How flattering," she says and smiles a very eerie smile, white teeth glistening in the soft light. "This one only ever wanted you to call her a witch. She is _purring_."

The creature steps closer once again, and Draco finds himself backed against a large stone, nearly as tall as he. More an embankment than a rock. "Wait, please," he starts, willing to grovel, to plead for his life. Fear rising; bravado eclipsed.

"No need to beg," she assures him, voice a harsh whisper of wind, but as beautiful as a melody all the same. "This one wants to be yours. She won't let me have you, but she needed me, needed her nature, to take. To claim."

"Her nature?"

"This one, _we_, are Hermione Granger; have always been Hermione Granger, and she is all that we are."

"What," he croaks as her hands lay flat against this chest and slide to his shoulders, "what are you?"

She blinks at him, her dark eyes regaining some of the flecks of gold he finds familiar. When had they become black as pitch? "A siren," she says, tone less layered and full of echoes of song. "Dormant for a long time, but she… _I_… woke up."

"You sound like you again, Granger," he notes, comforted by her natural voice.

"She knows you're afraid," she explains, quiet and unsure. "Of _her_, at least. Of my siren. So I sent her down… But you're not afraid of me, are you, Draco?"

She's looking up at him with those pretty dark eyes, mouth parted slightly, and his heart thrums out of something much different than the fear of before.

"No," he rasps, "not of you."

"Oh, good," escapes her lips like a breath as she pushes her mouth against his.

She tastes like the sea, regardless that she drips with the Black Lake, and she is warm, though her skin is chilled by the moonlit water. Her lips pillow his and she traces her tongue across the seam.

He's overtaken by her, desire quelling any hesitation as he intensifies their game. He pushes his tongue into her mouth and groans when she meets him with her own. Her hands travel around his shoulders to cling at the back of his neck, fingertips digging into the cleft below his skull then twisting into the fine hairs he wears short at the nape.

Hermione presses her body against him, seeking friction, searching for evidence of his interest. She hums when she finds it, sliding her body up and down, teasing his shaft.

When she pulls her mouth away to lay open, wet kisses against his collarbone, he asks, "Aren't you cold, Granger. We could go inside…"

She shakes her head, continuing to kiss and lick at his skin. "I'm never cold," she tells him, and her tone is eerie, though not as much as before. He doesn't want her to lose herself again; doesn't want to be ensorcelled by a siren rather than seduced by the witch he has secretly wanted.

Draco is familiar with Sirens. Their origins are long rumoured to be the descendents of a Veela mated with one of the mermish. They are rare and coveted, wizards said to have given up fortunes and family to be chosen.

"Granger," he says, stern, and holds her face in her hands, searching for her eyes. They are still flecked with gold.

She looks at him in question and he presses a gentle kiss to her mouth. "I just wanted to make sure you were still in there."

She smiles softly. "I'm always here, even when she speaks for me."

He watches her gaze fall to his lips, then her eyes lift back to his, hooded and intent. "But she can be impatient," she says as she untucks his shirt from his trousers and slides her hands up his chest.

"I apologize," he chokes out as one of her hands drops and brushes along his length. "I didn't mean to keep you waiting."

Hermione grins up at him, and he shudders when her palms makes another pass. "You have, you know. I've waited-" another stroke down his length "-for weeks now. I'd started to wonder if I had imagined it all."

"Imagined that I wanted you?" She nods. "What a very uninformed opinion."

Draco surges forward, no longer content to give this witch all the control. Siren or not, she's still Hermione Granger, and he's wanted this for longer than he would have admitted before now. He cups her face with his palms, holding her still and devouring her while she clings, her small hands wrapped around his wrists.

He swallows her whimpers and her moans before gathering her against him, wrapping his arm around her back while gripping her hip with his other hand. He pulls her forward, bending his knees to grind against the apex of her thighs. Her whimpers increase until she is breaking their kiss to whisper encouragements and pleas.

"Once I'm yours," he says into her neck, punctuating the words with a nip to her skin, "what will you do with me?"

"You'll always want me," she whimpers back, and he knows it to be true, then her voice strengthens even as she is pliant under his mouth and hands. "Sirens are predatory, but we choose a life to keep. I'll always want you, would never harm you, and I'd drown any who would dare."

If he allows this, the pure Malfoy line is about to come to an end. Lucius is going to have fucking kittens.

Draco chuckles, though his witch can't know exactly why.

He pulls away and says as fondly as one can say such a thing, "You are completely terrifying, Hermione Granger," then shoves his tongue back down her throat.

Draco isn't sure who pushes whom to the damp grass, but time moves fast and slow in equal parts as he both savours, but also loses himself in the night. His trousers are pushed to his knees, and she is sitting astride his pelvis, her sex slick against him as she kisses him, breasts free and pressed against his chest.

Hermione sits up slowly, wet curls dropping down her back as she straightens her shoulders and meets his eyes. Her fist encases him, squeezing until he pulses against her palm. She hums, pleased. "Tell me you wanted me before tonight."

"Fuck, Granger, I wanted you."

"Tell me you still want me," she says, and there is the barest tremor in her tone, the hint of insecurity, of the girl she was before she became something else.

"I still want you. I want you, and I'll want you tomorrow. Please, Hermione, please…"

As he begs, closing his eyes in sincerity and desperation, he feels her line herself above him and lower herself down his length. They hiss in unison, and Draco grips her thighs to hold her momentarily still. "Fuck, that's better than I imagined."

Slowly, he feels her slide against him, around him. He opens his eyes to find her watching his face. There is power here, magic thrumming between them like blood rushing through veins. She's glorious and terrible. He can see endless fathoms in her gaze, and he knows why men would follow a siren into the deep.

Draco moves to sit, grasping the back of her head, fingers tangling into her wet locks, and kisses her hard while she rides him. "That's it," he instructs, lips brushes against hers with each word. "Will you make me yours?"

"Mine," she answers, a whisper on his skin. "You're mine. Always mine."

Flipping her to the hard ground, Draco lays her down and nestles himself between her legs, plunging back into her and dropping his head to the crook of her neck. If he is hers, he will take her as well. She will be his, and he tells her.

"And you're mine, Granger," he growls into her ear, nipping and biting at her skin, soothing the places with his tongue, while he fucks her into the grass.

His pace is relentless, and his legs begin to shake as he builds to climax. Hermione's arms circle him, pulling him closer and brings her mouth to his. Not even a kiss, she moans and gasps, barely touching, breathing against each other's lips. She laps at him, suckles his bottom lip, all the while urging him with hands clawing at his back, rotating and thrusting her hips.

He kisses her hard when he comes, grunting and emptying himself until he is spent. They ease into a languid kiss, her hands gentle now, exploring him and petting down his back that he knows to bear scratches from her neatly trimmed nails.

He feels her shiver and nuzzles his nose against hers. "I thought you didn't get cold," he murmurs.

"I'm not," she says, laying gentle kisses to the corners of his mouth. "I feel different, though…"

Draco tilts his face to look down at her concerned expression. She continues. "You know it wasn't just… poetry, right? Romantic notions...? You're mine now. My siren will only want you, always."

He nods; he had known that. "I understand. Though… why did your siren choose me?"

Hermione giggles, and there are hints of the creature beneath the surface, her laugh sounding like a song that would lure a man to death. "She didn't. _I_ chose you weeks ago. You didn't think she was in charge did you," she teases, and he chuckles in turn.

"I'm fairly certain you're always in charge, Hermione Granger."

"Yes, Cormac never did learn that," she says, thoughtful.

"McLaggen?" He'd not thought of the boy in years, remembering him only as a faceless Quidditch rival.

She nods. "The siren never really liked him, and I just couldn't be bothered anymore. He learned the finality when a witch says 'no'."

Draco wants to ask, he really does, but something inside tells him he doesn't want to know. Then she's looking at him with those beautiful, bottomless eyes, and he also finds he doesn't really care.

It is possible that her song, the enchantment of a siren, has infected him, but he doesn't believe that to be the case. He wanted her long before tonight, before her voice bewitched him and her eyes saw through him. In the end, it doesn't matter. She chose him, and to deny that would be as futile, and as cruel, as to deny a Veela its mate, a vampire its maker.

Her face goes serious, head tilting as she looks up at him. "Will you love me, Draco? Even as what I am?"

"Endlessly," he tells her, without hesitation, and kisses her until she can taste that it is true.


End file.
